Page:Scidmore--Java the garden of the east.djvu/184

164 deadly fever-germs that haunt this region were almost visible, so dense was the air. While this section of the railway was building, even the native workmen were carried back each day to sleep in camps in safer neighborhoods. No white man could work, nor remain there directing work, and Chinese, who are germ-, bacillus-, microbe-, and miasma-proof in every climate, superintended work between the flying visits of European engineers. Beside these tangled and noisome swamps there are quicksand regions, into which car-loads of solid materials were dumped for week after week, and where the track is still always being raised and rebuilt, and the floating earth-crust trembles with each passing train.

As we coursed along past those miles of rankest vegetation, not a waft of perfume reached us, nor did any mass of color or cloak of blossoms delight the eye—a green monotony of uninteresting vegetation, save for the ratan-palms which decorated every tree with their beautiful pinnate leaves. There was one luxuriant vine, half covering a tall tree, which bore clusters of large white blossoms and pendent red berries; but that was the one ideal vine of the imagined tropical jungle's mad riot of stranger and more gorgeous things than bougainvillea. No clouds, cascades, or festoons of gorgeous flowers, no waves of overpowering perfume, no masses of orchids, rewarded eager scrutiny; no birds of brilliant plumage flashed across the jungle's front; no splendidly striped tigers licked their chops and snarled in the jungle's shade; no rhinoceros snorted at the iron horse; and not a serpent raised a hissing head, slid away through dank grass, or looped